The Translator

THE TRANSLATOR is the fifth Ward Just novel I have read. Every one has been an absolute gem. The protagonist here is Sydney (nee Siggy) Van Damm, a German who has lived in Paris for over thirty years. Fluent in English and French, he makes his living as a translator. His wife, Angela, is an American he met in Paris. She comes from a lineage of wealth which has finally run out. They have a son, Max, who is brain damaged and lives in a nearby private hospital. Sidney makes his modest living primarily by translating the work of novelist Josef Kaus into English, but occasionally does "piece work" offered by an old friend, Junko Poole, who has numerous and nefarious connections. The main time frame of the story is 1989-1990, just prior to show more the reunification of Germany. Wishing to make some extra money in order to move with their son to the French countryside, Sydney reluctantly agrees to take one more shady job for Poole. It does not end well.

As is true in most Ward Just novels, there is a strong element of danger and suspense threaded throughout the narrative. There is also a very strong sense of history and the part it plays in all of our lives. Sydney cannot forget the horrific events of his childhood during the war. His father, a German officer, was taken away by his own people and killed. He sees people slaughtered in front of his eyes. He sees his mother's desperate determination to save him and herself no matter what she has to do. After the war he goes to college and becomes a linguist, then leaves Germany, turning his back on everything. But we can never really escape our own past, our own particular history, and neither, of course, can Sydney.

Ward Just has certainly studied his history and has perfected his own art too. His work has been compared to that of Henry James in its richness of detail, its firm sense of place, and the comparison is, I suppose, apt. I have only read a few short pieces by James, and remember finding him tedious and dry. Perhaps the difference in Just's work is that hightly developed element of suspense. His books read like literary thrillers.

One of the things I liked about THE TRANSLATOR was its story within a story, like a matryushka doll. Sydney is translating Kaus's latest novel, called, perhaps prophetically, Die Katastrophe (The Catastrophe). In it is an old man, with a disfigured face, who is trying to make sense of his childhood with a distant father and a mother who left. I pondered the meaning of this fictional boy with a damaged face and how Sydney might have thought of his own son with his damaged brain as he tried out and sampled possible ways to translate Kaus's story. The novel's translation is not completed. There is an unforeseen catastrophe in the lives of Sydney, Angie and Max.

Stories and characters merge and mesh. Just engages us by supplying all of his characters with their own histories. The author's own fascination with politics, history, wars and great literature (James is mentoned, of course) all come skillfully into play. This is not just an exciting, compelling story. This is great literature. I'm so glad there are still plenty of Ward Just books to choose from. I'm hooked. Highly recommended. show less

I really liked this book. I was completely out of my element, and almost put it down at one point, but I stuck with it, and it was well worth the time. More people should read it, I found it very rewarding even though it's something I wouldn't normally read.

Ward Just, a novelist of manners in the Henry James fashion, died in 2019. Here he tries his hand at a caper novel. Just's narratives are filtered through interior monologues, though. So the action is revealed slowly, very slowly and deliciously. No surprise, there's not much of a caper here, just a lot of history repeating. The end is preordained, with the real mystery coming from the expatriate characters' self-deception. It seems the message always changes with the interpretation. I read this alongside a recent story of a fictional translator, Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

Wonderful book, I just wish that all his books didn't end in exactly the same manner. Much like Graham Greene, both in style and substance on that front.